Galway Bay (25 page)

“I would.”

“You may bring it home, Paddy,” Michael said.

“Oh, thank you, Da, thank you!”

I took Paddy’s hand and we walked together over to Mam and Da and Granny, who were standing with Miss Lynch.

“Good evening, Miss Lynch,” I said.

“Your boy, Honora. Father Gilley would not approve. The candles are not to be taken.”

“I know, Miss Lynch, but Paddy wants to guard his light.”

Michael said, “What harm?”

“Objections were raised to giving out the candles,” Miss Lynch said. “Mightn’t the people try to sell them? But my brother, Nicholas, told the others on the relief committee that the people would be too afraid of offending their saint.”

Her brother, Nicholas. I’d heard he’d returned from his travels, married with a young son, though his family stayed in Dublin. He was taking over for his father.

“After all, they had funds left over,” she went on.

“Funds left over, Miss Lynch?” asked Michael.

“Why, yes. The new government ordered that all types of emergency relief works be ended, the food depots closed. Nicholas said that Sir John Russell—he’s the new prime minister . . .”

“We know the name, Miss Lynch,” Michael said, “but why no relief if there’s money left? I don’t understand.”

“Sir John Russell—my brother says his nickname is ‘the Widow’s Mite’ because he’s practically a dwarf and married to Lord Ribblesdale’s widow—is a Whig and was a friend of O’Connell, but his government has turned against the Irish.”

“The money, Miss Lynch,” said Da.

She explained that because the relief committee had been required to
sell
the cornmeal, it had made a profit of six hundred pounds, which now couldn’t be spent on any kind of help for the people for fear we’d become dependent on charity. But Father Gilley had taken two pounds for the candles.

“Six hundred pounds left over,” Michael said, shaking his head.

There’d been so many weeks when Michael hadn’t been paid for his work on the roads, and now to find there’d been money all the time.

“Miss Lynch?” Michael started.

I knew that tone. Michael doesn’t rile easily, but once he . . . Will he start thundering at Miss Lynch? But Michael caught himself on, stopped.

Miss Lynch was going on to Mam, “We’ve prayed for a bountiful harvest, and I’m sure Our Lord will hear our prayers.”

Michael and the children and I trudged along the Bay and up the hill to Knocnacuradh alone. No céili in Bearna on this Lughnasa.

“Why is Miss Lynch still fat, Mam?” Paddy asked me.

Michael laughed. “A good question, Honora. She has the only round face in six townlands.”

“We’ll all be plumped out soon enough,” I said. “There’s bilberries to eat when we get home. You were right not to go for her, Michael. She’s no idea what our life is. Won’t let herself see.”

“Six hundred pounds,” Michael said.

It began to rain.

“See, Mam?” said Paddy. “All those candles at the well will surely go out, but Saint Enda will see mine and make our pratties grow.”

“Good man, Paddy,” Michael said to him. “God helps him who helps himself.”

That night I asked Michael, “Was it right to give in to Paddy?”

“When I saw him standing there, so determined, I thought, That’s Honora as a child. So sure of herself, and—”

“Me? I was a docile little girl.”

Michael laughed and kissed me.

Even though I blew out the candle when Paddy went to sleep and lit it first thing in the morning, after seven days only the smallest stub of wax remained.

“I think that boyo’s given its all,” Michael said to Paddy.

“It’s burning,” he said.

A blue flame did cling to a bit of wick, a pinpoint of light in the dark of the cottage.

Another dull day, no sun since last Sunday. And the pratties?

“Green, Honora, and growing,” Michael said, reading my thoughts.

“Should we walk up and look?” I said. “It’s a soft rain, and a run would help these lads sleep.”

“Can I bring the candle, Da?”

“Good idea. Maybe you could hold it up to heaven and let the last of it burn out, and then, then . . .” Michael looked at me.

“We’ll plant the stub in the ground,” I said. “It will grow into a tall candle.”

“By harvesttime?” Paddy asked.

“Could be,” Michael said.

Paddy’d been counting off the months. The early potatoes would be ready soon and the full crop next month.

Paddy ran ahead with Michael. I carried Bridget, and Jamesy held my hand as we stepped out into the drizzle.

We’d only just started up toward the ridges when the rain stopped. Good, I thought. Good. But then . . .

“Michael! Look, the fog!”

Only wisps of it floated down at first. Cold fingers of fog touched my face and prickled my nose. It was getting heavier, solid now, winding itself around each of us, separating one from the other.

Holding tight to Bridget, I pulled Jamesy close and reached out for Michael. Paddy stepped between us. We stood still, the five of us, not able to see beyond ourselves.

“It went out! The fog killed my candle!” Paddy cried.

And then the stench came, mixing with the fog, choking us.

Michael started running, with Paddy after him. I ran, too, Bridget on my hip, Jamesy coming behind me.

Michael and Paddy disappeared into this evil mist. I caught up with them at the first potato ridge. Michael bent over the plants, which were shrouded in fog. I knelt down, trying to see, still holding Bridget, Jamesy next to me. Paddy stood apart.

“Michael, are they—”

“Black,” he said. “All black.” He got up, ran to the next ridges.

Please God, let some be sound. Please, please . . .

“These are blighted, too,” Michael shouted back to us. The fog muffled his voice as he reached the higher ridges. “Dead . . . This one, too . . . dead, dead, dead . . .” Fainter and fainter . . .

I sat down in the damp and ruined field, holding Bridget against my shoulder, Jamesy on my lap.

Paddy stayed rigid and apart. “I didn’t mean it,” he whispered to me. “I should have left the candle at the well. I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

I turned him to me, took his face in my hand, and said, “Paddy, you’re a fine, sturdy lad and God loves you. You did nothing wrong.”

“But why, Mam? Did I make Saint Enda angry? Why did God do this to us?”

“God didn’t send the blight,” I said.

Michael returned. “Honora, they’re all gone. All. Every ridge. Nothing. No potatoes at all. Worse than last year.”

“I’m sorry, Da. I’m sorry,” Paddy said between hiccuping cries. “I shouldn’t have asked for the candle.”

Michael knelt down and took Paddy in his arms.

“He thinks God’s punishing him,” I said.

Jamesy and Bridget were wailing now. Michael looked at me. Tears filled his own blue eyes, so like Paddy’s. He blinked them away and put his hands on Paddy’s shoulders.

“You did nothing, and neither did God. The old blight is a fierce enemy, and it got our pratties again, but an Irish hero doesn’t cry when the enemy attacks. He fights back. He protects his family.”

Paddy’s chest was heaving, but he’d stopped sobbing.

“Would Cuchulain give up, or Finn McCool? Would they? . . . Answer me.”

“They wouldn’t,” Paddy said.

Jamesy sobbed softly, but he was listening.

“And are you a soldier, Paddy?”

“I am,” he said.

“Me too,” said Jamesy.

“And we’ve Mam and Bridget as our warrior queens,” Michael said.

“You do indeed,” I said.

Michael stood up. I moved over to him. He put his arm around me, pulling Bridget and me into his chest. Paddy and Jamesy stood between us, holding our legs, Paddy’s face in my skirt.

Through the fog, I heard shouts going from glen to glen. Then the keening started—in Rusheen, Shanballyduff, Cappagh, and all the townlands around us. I stood silent, leaning against Michael. He held the children and me to him. As the sorrowful sounds and evil-smelling fog wrapped themselves around us, I prayed.

November—the eve of Samhain. Ghosts walked the roads—not the souls of the dead, but real people dying.

A week now since Mary Ryan had come for me in the early morning. “Hurry, Mrs. Kelly, come quick.”

A good, reliable girl, Mary. I’d left the children with her the few times there’d been a catch to sell in Galway City during this storm-cursed autumn of no fishing. She’d bring the twins and baby Thaddy, and the children would play together. I’d feed them whatever we were eating—stirabout or a bit of turnips—and give her something to take to Tessie. “When the roadworks open, your da will get work and you can share with us,” I’d tell her. She was a proud little thing.

But the roadworks hadn’t opened. No help of any kind came from the government. Our three gold coins were gone, with the guts of the winter ahead of us.

Michael and I had run with Mary to the Ryans’ cottage. We’d found Tessie rocking her poor wee baby Thaddy—only a swollen belly and four sticks of arms and legs. The twins, Henry and Albert, sat near a sputtering fire, holding hands.

“He stopped crying.” Tessie looked up at us. “I thought he was asleep.”

But baby Thaddy was dead.

“Is he . . . ?” Mary asked me.

I only nodded.

She started weeping. I held her. Tessie began to scream—not keening, howling.

Something was slamming into the outside wall of the cottage. Michael went out to see. “Neddy is tumbling the cottage so they’ll take them into the workhouse,” he said when he came back.

Hours before Tessie finally laid the little corpse on a straw pallet.

Michael had tried to stop Neddy, reminding him that the workhouse was worse than prison—husband and wife separated, children kept from their mothers, useless labor demanded of the inmates, meals of spoiled food, a terrible risk of disease. Entering the workhouse was a shame against a family for generations. Michael told Neddy he should wait—there was talk that the landlords would have to give employment.

But Neddy had hacked at the walls like a man demented. Complete destitution was required in order to enter the workhouse. The Ryans must erase themselves from the estate, become “homeless paupers.” An official would come later to confirm that Neddy had destroyed their cottage.

I offered to keep the children. Maybe Neddy and Tessie could go . . . I didn’t say “begging,” but Tessie knew what I meant. Tessie wouldn’t hear of it, nor would she leave Mary. She needed Mary. The twins obeyed only her. And Mary wouldn’t leave her little brothers.

Neddy said that he could carry the body of baby Thaddy to the workhouse to prove their need.

And then Albert had called out, “Paddy!” and there was my son in the doorway, staring at the little body.

The Ryans went that very day. “We’ll eat tonight,” Tessie said.

Paddy lay awake that night. Michael sat with him, stroking his back and telling him that soldiers fought even harder after a comrade fell in battle. He must be very brave in honor of Thaddy. Paddy nodded and finally fell asleep.

Now on this Samhain’s eve, a week later, Paddy seemed bent on tormenting Jamesy. “I remember when we ate three times every day,” Paddy was telling him. “I could have as many pratties as I wanted, and Mam would say to me, ‘Go on, have another, my sturdy lad.’”

“You’re lying, Paddy, lying! Isn’t he, Mam? Three times? He’s lying!”

“We did, Jamesy,” I said. “You remember the apples, don’t you, and the nuts we had last Samhain? And the great feast on Mac Dara’s Island?”

“I do, Mam.”

“We’ll have food like that again.”

“But I remember Uncle Patrick better than you do, and Oisín,” Paddy said.

“I remember Oisín,” Jamesy said.

“Of course you do.” Michael and Owen Mulloy had gotten two pounds from the Biany people for the colt. A favor, really—Oisín wasn’t a draft horse. Bred to race. And the money’d not bought enough.

“But I remember Oisín being born. You don’t mind that, Jamesy. That was in the before times and—”

“You two stop this,” I said. “Now, Jamesy, sit with Bridget and give her a sip of the nettle tea. Take some yourself. It warms your belly.”

“It doesn’t,” Mam,” he said. “It goes through me and makes my bum ache something awful.”

“Come, Paddy,” I said. “We’ll look for Da.”

We walked out in front of the cottage and stood on the drumlin.

“Paddy, why are you taunting Jamesy? Why won’t you let him have his part of remembering?”

“Mam, he’s too little to really remember. But I’m not. I know what it feels like to have a full belly. And when I say he doesn’t, then he says he does, and he makes up the memory and his belly feels full too for a bit. . . . You see?”

“I see, a stór.”

We stood looking down the hill for Michael. The roadworks had finally opened two days ago, but Michael was so weak that I was afraid he’d collapse climbing the hill.

If only the work had begun right away in August after the failure, when he’d been stronger. Those first three months . . . If not for Patrick’s coins, would any of us be alive?

High food prices took that money so quickly. No cheap Indian corn this year, though the coast guard depot was piled high with it. Captain Anderson told Da that Trevelyan said Peel had been wrong to sell it for so little last year and interfere with trade, so the corn was being held. “For what?” Da had asked. The captain didn’t know.

I saw him. “Michael! Michael!”

Michael was carrying something. I hugged Michael and took the bag. He’d been able to trade the saddle for one week’s food. We’d have to eat very little every day. Paddy held Michael’s hand and we pulled him inside, where it was warm. At least we had turf.

I cooked an inch of the meal into a porridge, stirring it in boiling water, while Michael went out to Champion, carrying our one tin cup.

Michael came back in, gave me the cup, and I poured the contents into the meal.

“Is that Champion’s blood, Mam?”

“It will give you strength, Paddy.”

How many times could Michael nick the vein in Champion’s neck without harming her?

I held Bridget up, took some of the gruel on my finger, and put it between her lips. “Take it, take it.” She shook her head and pulled away from me. I held her mouth open and coated her tongue with the stuff, then gave her a sip of water.